Whisper to MeA book review

Whisper to Me, by Printz Award-winning author Nick Lake (In Darkness), tells the story of a teen learning to cope with mental illness.

The main setting of Whisper to Me takes place in Oakwood, New Jersey. The book has multiple settings but Oakwood is where it all takes place.

Cass is the main character. Walking on the beach in the summer between junior and senior years, Cass discovers a human foot that's washed ashore -- which is more than enough to rattle anybody, but the town of Oakwood, New Jersey, has a serial killer on the loose, and Cass fears the foot may belong to one of his victims. Now Cass hears a voice when no one's around, and the voice is not nice. It curses, tells her she's worthless, and, worst of all, makes her hurt herself. Eventually she's hospitalized and given drug treatments, and she finds a support group for people who hear voices.

Her father is another character. He struggles with untreated PTSD after serving in the war as a Navy SEAL and owns his father's popular pizza joint. Cass believes that her father wants nothing with her until she realizes that it's the complete opposite and he truly loves her.

Cass meets Paris when she is hospitalized and is going through treatment. She is a stripper and poses nude online as her line of work. They become best friends and participate in the support group together. Paris, later, goes mysteriously missing.

The book is Cass writing a letter to this boy, who she has feelings for. In the book, she is trying to explain to him what she did and why she handled it the way she did. He lives in the apartment up her family's pizza joint and work on the pier as a manager of stuffed animals for the game booths.

After Cass finds a human foot washed up on a New Jersey beach, she starts to hear a voice that threatens to harm her and others unless she obeys it. Briefly hospitalized due to the voice, Cass finds a friend, Paris, arguably worse off than she is, who encourages her to stop taking her meds. Cass' tale takes the form of a letter pleading for understanding to a boy she fell in love with and misses terribly. In a distinctive, conversational voice, she finally tells the boy, in fits and starts and a lot of lists, the story of her struggles with mental illness and guilt over her mother’s death. Because it’s a letter addressed to him, the result is a second-person narrative of nearly equal weight to Cassie’s first-person story, emphasizing the novel’s themes of duality and internal struggle against one’s own demons.

My personal review is, so far, a 10/10. When I pick this book up, it makes time seem like it's nothing. Page turner from the beginning and I can't keep my nose out of it. Nick Lake balances all these aspects, keeping the plot moving and seamlessly shifting from one to another without short-changing any. Cass' utterly believable narrative voice creates a likable, relatable protagonist who destigmatizes mental problems and could encourage the estimated 10 percent of teens who experience them by assuring us all that it can get better with help..

*Quick Disclaimer* - I never finished the book but I still love it and plan on finishing it, if I can, thank you. -Kelsey Perkins,